Some time ago I was recommending to use Python virtual environment to install local version of Python packages. However this will not solve the issue of outdated version Python in the server your are working in. Here, pythonbrew may be help for you.

Working on the machines with no root access is sometimes annoying, especially if you depend on multiple Python packages and your distro is somehow outdated… You may find Python virtual environment (venv) very useful.
First, you need to create venv directory structure (this is done only once):

mkdir -p ~/src/venv
cd ~/src/venv
virtualenv py27

Then you can open new BASH terminal and activate your venv by:

source ~/src/venv/py27/bin/activate

After that, you can install / upgrade any packages using pip / easy_install (even including PIP ) ie.

Today, I have encountered problems trying to read data from sshfs share in apache2. I was getting 403 Forbidden error. It turned out you need to enable other_user in sshfs, so other users than the one mounting the share can access the data, as apache2 is using www-data user.

I’m using more & more remote machines in which I don’t have admin rights, so usual sudo easy_install isn’t working. But there is simple work around by installing Python packages to non-default directory.